In Anatshell

National Duathlon Festival Championship Thing

I must have drooled over at least ten or eleven bikes in the transition area of the National Duathlon Festival. Not only were the bikes spectacular but the level of the athletes and the whole event was much higher than any triathlon or duathlon that I had participated in (minus the expo that left something to be desired). I completed the course in 2:41 and I was 16/30 in my age group.

Today I received an email from TeamUSA letting me know that “you have earned a spot on the Team USA Roll Down list for 2009 ITU Duathlon World Championships because of your finish at the 2009 Duathlon National Championship”. I blinked a few times, scratched my head to emphasize a thought process, and then realized that this email is the closest I will probably be to competing in a ‘World’ anything. After conducting further research I found that “The top 12 in each age group, rolling down to 16th place at the Duathlon National Championship, will qualify for the 2009 World Championships in Concord, North Carolina (Sept. 24-26) “. This means that I just made it to the rolling down point, whatever that means. If 4 people don’t want to go, I’ll be offered a spot. I wonder what t-shirt I’ll get if I compete in a world championship? Got to keep things in perspective.

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good news is that I got to sleep in on race day (hi five). The bad news is that my wave was at 11:35 and it was going to be 90 degrees outside (cancel hi five from before). The issue is that, being the amazing team player that I am, I still woke up early to cheer on my fellow team mates who started at 8:30. That means that my spanking new well-fit triathlon uniform was nice and moist with sweat well before the race start. This made a 10k run feel like a very hot 10k run (That was a message from Captain Obvious). This run led me to think about how I need to develop a kind of mantra for my run in order to survive the half ironman in a few weeks. This mantra has to have a beat to it in order to keep my pace up and it needs to be something more powerful than my “left , right , left” mantra which made sense at the time.

The bike section was nice because I had a team to cheer me on. In previous races, I was lucky if my friend, Rakefet, was competing because her brother came to cheer her on and I got a courtesy cheer every once and a while. Not only did the team cheer me on, but they actually waited for me to finish. Either Well-Fit is filled with great people or I have shitty friends (the ones who don’t read my blog). In any event, I did feel like I was apart of the team for that weekend. I had the luxury of roasting in the well-fit tent for a few hours and the Get-A-Grip “in tent” mechanic gave my bike a once over.

USAT thought it would be funny if they gave the duathletes beer glasses instead of medals at the finish line. It’s a nice thought but all I could think about was opening my suitcase in Israel and seeing my Carbo Pro mixed with slivers of shattered glass. Then I would have to throw away all of the Carbo Pro that made my bag overweight and cost me $100 to bring over and $20 to purchase. So was my $65 race worth it? I did get an awesome transition bag and hat and shirt so… what’s a few slivers of glass anyway.

Overall I really enjoyed myself in this competition and it gave me a much needed boost of confidence towards the 70.3 ironman on the 17th of May. I can’t say that I was particularly fast during this race but I see it as a kind of intermediate race towards the main goal. After the half ironman, I will be flying back to Israel and continuing to blog from there.

Some imagery and comments -

This was the well-fit tent -